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Ali La Pointe
Ali Omar (15 January/14 May 1930-8 October 1957), also known as Ali La Pointe, was an FLN leader during the Algerian War. Originally just a street criminal, Ali La Pointe eventually joined the FLN under Saadi Yacef and led the FLN during the Battle of Algiers. He was killed when French police blew up the wall in which he was hiding with a few accomplices. Biography Ali Omar (also called Ali Ammar) was born in Miliana in 1930, and was formerly a laborer, bricklayer, and boxer. In 1942 he was sentenced to one year in a reformatory for vandalism, in 1944 he was sentenced to two years for disorderly conduct in the Oran Juvenile Court, and in 1949 the Court of Algiers sentenced him to eight months in prison for insulting a police officer on duty. In 1954, when the Algerian War broke out between France and the rebel FLN movement fighting for Algerian independence, La Pointe joined the FLN in Barberousse Prison. La Pointe was sent messages by a contact named Little Omar, a young child who slipped him notes and had to read them aloud to him; La Pointe was illiterate. He was sent to kill policeman Mathieu Beauregard, who often stopped at a Moorish cafe to meet with its informant owner Awrib Merabi, with a woman with a basket giving him a gun to shoot him with. However, the gun was unloaded and he was forced to beat the policeman up and flee with the woman. The woman then brought him to her boss, Saadi Yacef (under the alias of "El-Hadi Jaffar"), who told him that it was a test to see if he worked for the police. Jaffar told Ali that they needed to clean house before fighting the government. In April 1956 the FLN assumed responsibility for the people of Algeria and proclaimed that they would outlaw the selling of all drugs and alcoholic beverages, as well as prostitution and procuring. He gunned down a former friend named Hassan el-Blidi after repeat crimes against the FLN's laws, shooting him five times with a Tommy Gun and telling his two accomplices to get lost. On 10 June the FLN announced that they would hold their weddings in the open, with Mahmoud and Fatiha being the first couple to marry in public. On 20 June at 10:32 AM Ali knifed a police officer in the neck and stole his pistol; at 11:40 Ali and five others ambushed two police officers in the station and killed them; at 3:30 PM, an FLN fired a submachine gun out of a moving car and killed two French policemen, but was gunned down while fleeing the car; at 4:15 PM, 7 French policemen and troops were ambushed and killed by FLN on an overpass; dozens more of attacks occurred in the following days. On 30 September 1956, the FLN planned to blow up several locations across Algiers to terrorize the French government. Three women (Djamila Bouhired, Zohra Drif, and Samia Lakhdari) were each given bags; the first one was sent to Air France on Rue Mauritania; the second to the Rue Michelet cafe; and the third to the Rue D'Isly milk bar. The three women had 30 minutes to plant the bombs, whose fuses were short. The bombings of the milk bar and cafe killed 3 French youths and injured 50 people, while the Air France terminus bomb failed to explode due to a faulty timer. On 28 December 1956 he killed Amedee Froger, Mayor of Boufarik. On 10 January 1957, French Army paratroopers arrived in the city under the command of General Jacques Massu, restoring order. By early 1957 an average of 4.2 attacks occurred each day. With the world behind them, the FLN launched a week-long strike during which period they suspended attacks. Massu planned "Operation Champagne", enclosing the Algerians into a small corridor. They arrested many FLN supporters and planned to take down the executive branch of the FLN, targeting Si Murad, Ramel, Jaffar, and Ali La Pointe. Many FLN leaders were killed in the crackdown, known as the "Battle of Algiers". Eventually, Jaffar was captured along with Djamila Bouhired after the police threatened to blow up the house they were hiding in. While in the police car with Colonel Massu, Bouhired told Massu that the FLN were not dead, as Ali still survived. Colonel Yves Godard tracked La Pointe down to the casbah (historical district) of Algiers and paratroopers, acting on FLN torture victim Laknan Abdullah's information, attacked his house. Along with Little Omar, Hassiba Ben Bouali, and Hamid Bouhamidi, he was killed when the French bombed the house when he refused to surrender. Category:FLN Category:Algerians Category:Killed Category:1930 births Category:1957 deaths Category:Criminals Category:Sunnis Category:Algerian socialists Category:Socialists